The Lion of Winter
by Commander Shadestorm
Summary: Lord Tywin Lannister is a cold, cruel, icy man who rules with an iron fist. But after the visits of his an old friend and the visits of three spirits of Winter he may just come to accept the season of Midwinter after all. (An adaptation of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol.' Similarities to the original text will be apparent, but I have tried to put my own spin on it. Please R&R)
1. Stave One: A King's Ghost

**The Lion of Winter**

By Commander Shadestorm

_Stave One: A King's Ghost_

"_Winter is coming." The words of House Stark, I wish I had listened to them now."_ Lord Tywin mused to himself as the last flickers of the logs in his chambers faded. He thought of calling for more but it hardly seemed worth it. The snows raining upon Kings Landing would douse it soon enough. The Hand of the King walked across the room and recalled his servant from Harrenhall, the one he had left with Clegane. She had been a sharp little thing, sharper than most of the serving girls and pages swarming this rats nest of a city. He should have brought her to the capital; she might have liked it here. Regardless, he was here and she was likely gone. How could he check on her since Martell poisoned the Mountain?

He locked his hands behind his back and paced towards the window, the howling winds of winter raging outside his window. Through the snow he could still hear the echoes of the peasants swarming the streets of the city, whores and smiths, Inn keeps and Gold-Cloaks alike singing. Singing the carols of Midwinter. _Truly, I envy them. They only have their own lives, the weight of the seven Kingdoms is not weighing down on their shoulders. They have each other, their brothers, their children….their spouses. Oh, Joanna._ The Great lion of Casterly Rock sighed and turned back to his office. He sat himself back down and chose another letter from the mound of them that were frequently sent to him from all corners. Lords fearful of their grain, Lords fearful of Stannis, Lords fearful of the Targaryen Girl. On and on. _If they want grain, they might petition the Tyrells. With Tommen's marriage to Margaery, they might think to ask them if their food grows short. _He picked up a pen knife and opened a letter bearing a seal bearing an upright stallion. _House Bracken._ It was all the same, the war had drained their supplies and their people were starving. It was all the same as usual.

Winter had been raging through the Seven Kingdoms since Tyrion's "trial." How long had it been now since he had taken the black, three years, four? Cersei had wanted his head, and was willing to pay a very handsome sum for it, though if anyone could travel to King's Landing from the Wall without freezing that would be accomplishment enough. They came slowly at first, light snows that caused happy laughs in the street. Snowball fights and such. But slowly and surely, they grew bigger and stronger and fiercer and forced the people inside their doors. Until now, that is. According to the Archmaesters and their white ravens, winter was it's halfway point. Midwinter, a time of celebration for Commoner and Noble alike. A time of Goodwill and giving to Andal and First Man alike. _A bigger lie than the legend of the Others. A bunch of nonsense, what have they to be thankful for? Naught! They will die soon enough and the world will forget them sooner than later._ Tywin sighed, but then a thought occurred to him. He gazed at the sun and realised it was later than he thought. _Seven hells, I was supposed to meet with those representatives!_ He would have rushed out of his seat, but he would not do that. _A Lannister does not hurry, he is calm and does not act like a fool, _he recalled himself once telling Jaime back at the rock. He walked out the door to the tower of the hand, arms by his side as he silently acknowledged the guards with Lion-crested helms stand to attention for him. He descended the steps and noticed the looks that everyone gave him, from scullery maids, to Gold-Cloaks to coal boys and Serving girls. They all stood aside for him, he had always wondered whether it was the chain or the eyes that instilled fear in them.

From the youngest age, Tywin had known he did not smile. He recalled his last natural smile at the feast where father engaged Genna to a Frey, a second son at best. Not the heir, yet Lord Walder thought his spawn was fit for a lioness of the rock. His Father's own bannermen mocked him as the toothless lion after that day. The only times Tywin could recall smiling after that was his wedding to Joanna and when Tarbeck Hall came crashing down.

The looks those gave him were one of fear and respect. He looked down onwards and saw cheery looks on their eyes and they greeted their own people. They would never have gave him such treatment. No crimson cloak ever waved at him and said "Lord Tywin, how are you? When will you come to see us?" Had he seen any, the beggars would never have accepted Lannister gold, no whelp would ask him what it was o'clock, no one would ever inquire what way it was to such a place of Lord Tywin. Even the place dogs would wince when the prowling lion would happen to walk by.

But what did Lord Tywin care? He was Hand of the King, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the West and protector of the realm. This was the very thing he liked! To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance. They scampered along, hoping his paw would not scoop them up and toss them into the lion's jaw. He continued to stroll along the hall, the sounds of winter and midwinter carolling outside the walls of the Red Keep, at that moment he saw his squire run up to him with his Golden Greatsword. "Lord Tywin, I cleaned your sword. Just like you asked!"

"Very good, leave it in my chambers." He commanded.

"Blessed midwinter, my lord!" he cried cheerfully.

"Hah!" said Tywin "A waste of effort!" He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the red keep, this Squire of Lannister, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. "Midwinter, a waste of effort my lord?" asked his squire, aghast. "You don't mean that, I'm sure?"  
>"I do." Affirmed Tywin. "Blessed Midwinter! What right have you to be blessed, what <em>reason<em>? Your family is poor enough for a son of a Landed Knight."

"Come, then," returned the squire happily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich and powerful enough." Lord Tywin, having no answer to his squire at that moment simply grunted and tried to shrug the situation off.

"Don't be angry, my lord!" said the Squire.

"What else can I be," returned the Hand, "when I live in such a world of fools as this? Midwinter celebration! Out upon Merry Midwinter! What's Midwinter to you but a time for paying King's taxes without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in, through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Tywin indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with "Blessed Midwinter" on his lips, should be hanged and paraded above the walls of King's landing . He would!" Tywin didn't mean that part, it would cause too much civil disturbance to be at all worth it's effort. So he simply decided to wait out this blasted season, perhaps he'd be gone by the next midwinter.

"Lord Tywin!" pleaded the Squire.

"Jeron!" Tywin returned sternly, "Keep the season in your way and I will keep it in mine."

"But you don't keep it, my lord." The Squire argued.

"Then let me leave it then! Much good has it done you, as much good as anyone!" The Lord of Casterly Rock grumbled.

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,'" returned the squire. "The celebration of Midwinter among them. But I am sure I have always thought of Midwinter, when it has come round, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that - a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the years, when men and women seem by one consent to open their hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, My Lord, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, Seven save it!" A nearby Gold Cloak involuntarily applauded, but one stare from Lord Tywin and he realised his impropriety and went about his duties

"Let me hear another sound from you," warned Lord Tywin, "and you'll keep your Midwinter by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his squire. "I wonder why you don't become one of King Tommen's retainers."

"Don't be angry, Lord Lannister. My Lord father asks you to come to my family's holdfast for our midwinter feast." Lord Tywin remained silent, but simply responded to the inquiry with a cold, hard stare. The ones the Warden of the West was known for, and that gave the lively squire his answer; "_I would sooner see the Imp as Lord of the Rock, than attend your barely Highborn ilk for this ridiculous holiday_."

"But why?" cried his squire. `

"Why? Why did you get married at such a young age, to a peasant at that?" asked Tywin. He recalled the shame that would have been brought on by his family when Tyrion wed a whore, or close enough. Perhaps his father _wanted_ the downfall of his house.

"Because I fell in love, my lord."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Tywin, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a Blessed Midwinter. "Good afternoon!"

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?" pleaded his squire, as they stood by the glass window with the sounds of winter raging outside.

"Good afternoon," repeated Tywin.

"I am sorry, my Lord, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel. But I have made the trial in homage to the spirit of Midwinter, and I'll keep my winter humour to the last. So a Blessed Midwinter, my lord!"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

`And a fruitful Spring upon us!'

"Good afternoon and hang my sword by the portrait." reaffirmed Lord Tywin. At that point his squire got the point and with a silent bow retired from the hall. Before which, however, he had halted to converse with a Red cloak, who was warmer than the Great Lion as he returned the Sqquire's greetings cordially. "There's another one," muttered Tywin "one of my Household honour guards, with ten silver stars a week, and a wife and family, talking about a holy midwinter. I'll retire to the Wall at this rate." Regardless Lord Tywin pressed his arms along his sides again and proceeded to the entry hall where the Royal steward looked to be assuring two shrewd looking businessmen. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their snow stained hoods down. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

"Lord Tywin, son of Tytos of the House Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock, Warden of the Wets, Lord Paramount of the Westerlands, Shield of Lannisport, Saviour of our city, Hand of the King and the protector of the realm!" the Steward announced before silently slinking from view.

"My Lord Hand, forgive us but we were expecting the King."

"King Tommen is…predisposed at this time of day." Tywin replied. Not a lie, feeding his cats was very important to His Grace.

"We have no doubt his Grace's liberality will be represented by his Hand." Said the Gentleman presenting his credentials. Tywin turned to his guards. "Escort these men to my solar." He commanded. The group returned to the tower of the hand, with Tywin at their head. Upon their return the doors were sealed behind them. Tywin glanced over and observed that his golden Greatsword was in its sheath under the portrait of himself, Joanna, Cersei and Jaime at Casterly Rock. "Please, be seated." He offered them opposing seats to him as he sat down, ever at attention like a cautious cat.

"My Lord," a businessman began "At this festive season of the year, it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Especially with the conflict between the Wolf and the Lion. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, my Lord."

"Are there no dungeon cells?"

"Plenty of prisons, my Lord." said the gentleman.

"And the work camps?" demanded Tywin. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The mill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Tywin. He almost regretted passing that law, the leagues of sparrows swarming into King's Landing were aout of control. Thus, he had persuaded Tommen to approve the construction of nationwide camps for those downtrodden by the war. These were not Summerhalls all across the realm, they were cold hard places for those with nowhere else to go.

"Both very busy, my Lord Hand."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Tywin. "I'm very glad to hear it."

"A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink. And means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall I put the Crown's contribution for?" the other asked, picking up a quill and parchment.

"None." Tywin replied, almost instantly

"Ah, you wish for the Crown's charity to remain anonymous?" the former smiled.

"I wish to be left alone,' said Tywin raising himself from his seat. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at this time of the season and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned - they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."

"But, but, many can't, My Lord. Many more would die!" the latter cried.

"If they would die," Tywin whispered leaning into them, "They had best do it- and decrease the surplus population of these Seven Kingdoms."

"But, my lord-"

"This is no concern of mine," Tywin reaffirmed, reseating himself, "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other peoples. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen." Before they could continue, Tywin called for a guard to escort them back to the docks. He returned to his works, with an improved opinion of himself and in a more frivolous temper than was usual with the hand of the king.

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring lanterns, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The streets of King's landing were truly alive at this time, the sounds of the docks and the Keep. Ravens and Gold-Cloaks. Whorehouses and taverns were what made this city. Even the slum in flea bottom seemed different tonight. As the Hand of the King stood vigil by his window he observed all that was under his dominion but it seemed off tonight. Foggier yet, and colder! Regardless the time eventualy came for Tywin to retire to his personal chambers, not too far from his work study. He put on his pair of leather gloves and strolled across. At this point only the Red cloak had remained behind, he regarded his lord in the usual matter.

"I suppose the garrison will want Midwinters day off?" he inquired.

"If it is quite convenient, my lord."

"It's not convenient," said Tywin, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-dragon for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

The soldier smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Lord Tywin, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."

The guard observed that it was only once a season.

"A poor excuse for picking a lord's pocket!" said Tywin, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning."

The sentry promised that he would; and Tywin walked out with a growl. The study was closed in a twinkling, and the soldier, with the long ends of his red cloak dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide in Flea Bottom, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Midwinters Eve, and then ran home as hard as he could pelt, to play at cyvasse.

Lord Tywin took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy manner; and having read all the papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young castle, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but the Great Lion, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house. It made no matter, Lord Tywin sat by the fire in an old chair, sipping a glass of arbour red and recalling the rumours about Brandon and Rickard Stark.

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Tywin had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Tywin had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of King's landing, even including - which is a bold word - the court, garrison, and brothels. Let it also be borne in mind that Tywin had not bestowed one thought on King Aerys, since his last mention of his dead partner in ruling. _It's our anniversary, do you remember King Scab? You squired for me in the war of the Ninepenny kings, now my Grandson sits upon your throne. How did that ever work out? Ah yes, I sacked your city and Jaime plunged his sword through your back_! Tywin did not oft entertain these dark thoughts, for even the mad king had been his friend. Once upon a time. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Tywin, having his key in the lock of the door, heard through the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change - not a knocker, but a loud and coarse laughter. It was croaky and hoarse and it's laughter caught the attention of the slumbering lord. "Guard." He called out, but received no reply.

"Guard." He repeated, a little louder this time but with the selfsame reply.

"GUARD!" he hollered at the door bursting out of his seat. He was enraged, how _dare_ that guard ignore him? There was not a way in all Seven heavens and hells that he had missed his call. He angrily strolled across his chambers and unsealed the door, ready to accost the idle guard….but found the hall empty. Tywin was most confused, certainly, this was most peculiar. He glanced down one hallway and then another, all the while he heard the cackling grow louder and louder. He looked outside and noticed something, or to be more specific a lack of it. The windowsills were clear and the streets were empty yet neither the sun nor moon was suspended in the sky. Tywin walked through the empty halls of the Red Keep, trying to find the source of the merriment, and for the first time in forever, the Warden of the West was terrified. He knew where to go.

Eventually he found his way to the doors of the Throne Room, the laughing clearer than ever. _No, no, it cannot be…_ He thought to himself as he reached out to open the doors but they obeyed his command all on their own. Tywin observed the science before him, the Throne room was filled with faceless lord and ladies and at the foot of that ugly chair was two great fires below the Dragon skulls-

Wait, Robert had the skulls of the Targaryen dragons taken down….It cannot be… Tywin walked through the formless mass and up to the foot of the throne. The long fingers and unbridled hair nestling the dragon crown revealed the only face Lord Tywin Lannister had never wanted to see, as the laughter finally died down.

"Aerys." He confirmed as the mass looked down at him from atop the Iron Throne.

"Tywin, my most dear and loyal friend. How kind of you to come." He smiled, but this was not Aerys. Even in the latest and most horrific years of the Mad king, he would never have looked like this. He was surrounded in a dismal glow. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression. The same face: the very same. Aerys in his three headed dragon crown, usual waistcoat, tights and boot and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his neck. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Tywin observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Tywin, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the black swords on the throne behind him. The only time they would do no harm to King Scab. "It has been a long time hasn't it, how long now?"

"Almost two-and-twenty years, Your Grace."

"And yet, you still carry that same pain you always had for sweet Joanna. The third head of the dragon. Oh, I would have given up all seven Kingdoms for just one night-"

"ENOUGH!" he shouted storming up the steps of the Throne with a glare that would have sent the Others crawling back over the wall. "I care not for what you are; Aerys come back from the dead to haunt me, or some figment of a spirit. What do you want with me?" he demanded.

"Oh, much my friend." Aerys smirked.

"What are you?"

"Oh no, ask me who I _was!"_

Tywin sighed. "Very well; who _were_ you? You're rather particular…for a shade." He had opted for "to a shade" but decided this was more appropriate.

"In life, I was Aerys, the second of my name of the House Targaryen, King of the Andals…" _Titles, titles, titles…._"…protector of the realm. I see you are doubtful of my existence." Observed Aerys, slouching on the throne unafraid of the blades as Tywin's king once had been.

"I am." Tywin stated, walking back down the steps of the throne towards the on looking crowd of faceless silks and robes.

"What evidence would you have, bar that of your own senses?" he posed.

"I cannot say." Said Tywin

"Why doubt you own senses, Tywin?"

"Because," said Tywin, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of sauce, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are! Spirit or no!" Lord Tywin was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means happy then. The truth is, that he tried to be cunning, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his curiosity; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

To sit, staring at those fixed violet eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Tywin felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Tywin could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. "You see this toothpick?" said Tywin, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied Aerys.

"You are not looking at it," said Tywin.

"But I see it," said the Ghost.

"And I have but to swallow it to spend the rest of eternity in the darkest pit of the seventh hell. Pure nonsense, I tell you; nonsense!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Tywin was knocked aback, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast! Tywin's eyes burst open as he clasped his hands before his face. "Get away from me!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

"It would appear I have little choice in the matter," muttered Tywin. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. We are doomed to wander through the world –oh, woe is me! - and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!" Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

"You are restrained," said Tywin, cold as Casterly Rock. "Tell me why." He commanded.

"I wear the chain I forged in life, just as a maester does" replied the Apparition. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" Truly Tywin had begun to tremble at the sight of Aerys like this.

"Or would you know," pursued the Shade, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, the day you sacked my city. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!" Tywin glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

"Aerys," he said, imploringly. "Aerys, for any love that was once between us, give me some explanation for this!'

"I have none to give, my friend" the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions, Tywin of the House Lannister, and is conveyed by other septons, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our hall! In life my spirit never moved beyond the narrow limits of our castle; and weary journeys lie before me!"

It was a habit with Tywin, whenever he became thoughtful, to place his hands in a locked position behind his back . Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes. "You must have been very slow about it, Your Grace," Tywin observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and respect.

"Slow!" the Kingly Ghost exclaimed.

"Over twenty years dead," mused Tywin. "And travelling all the time!"

"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?" asked Tywin.

"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a greater quantity of ground." Replied Tywin.

The Ghost, on hearing this, gave another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Septon spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

"But you were always a good man of council, Aerys," paused the Hand of the King, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Council!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "The Seven Kingdoms was my council. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my council. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling season," the spectre said "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Andals to our Kingdoms! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?" Lord Tywin was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. "Hear me!" cried the Spirit. "My time is nearly gone."

"I will," assured Lord Tywin. "But don't waste my time! Don't be too elaborate, Aerys!" "How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible before this throne many and many a day." It was not an agreeable idea. Tywin trembled, and desperately sought to wipe the sweat from his brow.

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, my Lord of Lannister."

"You were always a good friend to me," said Tywin nonchalantly.

"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits both familiar and yet distant to you." Tywin's expression fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Your Grace?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is." The Ghostly monarch conformed.

"I'd rather not," said Tywin.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls One.'

"Couldn't I take them all at once, and have it over, Aerys?" Tywin japed, though not entirely.

"You should expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre stood upon his spooky feet, passing his wispy fingers and overgrown nails from the Throne, his neck chain around his neck, as before. Tywin knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The apparition walked down the steps of the Iron Throne towards him; and at every step it took, a nearby window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Tywin to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Aerys' Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. The Protector of the Realm stopped in his tracks.

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful hymn; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Tywin followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Aerys' Ghost; some few (they might be guilty parties) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Tywin in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white cloak, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.

Tywin stepped back and the window closed by itself, and he examined the great doors to the Throne Room by which he had entered.. Being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to his chambers and to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.


	2. Stave Two: The First of the Spirits

_Stave Two: The First of the two Spirits_

When Lord Tywin awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the smoky walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ever keen eyes, when the chimes of Baelor's Sept struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.

To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve. It was past two when he went to bed. The septons were wrong. An icicle must have got into the works.

"This isn't possible," announced lord Tywin, "How can I have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon." The idea was certainly a peculiar and alarming alarming one, he slowly advanced out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his worn coat before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro throughout the Red Keep and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world.

Tywin sat at his desk again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more confused he became; and, the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.

Aerys' Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after hard thought that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream, a figment of my imagination, or not?" Lord Tywin remained this way until the chime had gone three-quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to stay awake with a glass of wine until the hour was passed and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to any of the seven heavens, this was the wisest solution within his power. The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a slumber unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," mumbled Lord Tywin, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half past," said Lord Tywin.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Lord Tywin.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself." said Tywin triumphantly, yet continually unsmiling .

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy one. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Tywin, starting up into a half-leaning attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them. But no, it could not be…The creature was surrounded in light but just as he had with the ghost of Aerys, he tried to deny it. It was impossible that she was back, no matter how much he wanted to believe it; it simply could not be! The figure continued to walk through the light towards the Lord of The Rock and it was increasingly apparent that it was who he thought. Her robe of white flapping around her legs, with golden lions sewn on their sides. Her beautiful golden hair done up in the braids that she always loved, but those shining emeralds were cast downwards…"Joanna…" Tywin whispered, smiling for the first time in years. Whether this was some apparition, or Joanna come back; right now, Lord Tywin Lannister didn't give a fuck.

"Lord Lannister." She responded in a very detached manner, but Tywin did not understand.

"Joanna? Why are you calling me that?" Tywin asked, with a genuine sense of curiosity emerging. He had made it clear on their wedding night that they wouldn't need to use titles with one another, why would she need to use them now?

"I am not the woman I once was, and neither are you. My Lord" Joanna said, her voice dull and monotone unlike the happy tone that his wife had spoken in.

"I know who you are, my-" he began, but as he reached out to stroke her beautiful golden hair his hand passed straight through and Tywin looked on in horror.

" You renounced all claims to our love when you denied Tyrion, my lord."

"That vile little beast killed you, brought shame upon our house and name with his nature and actions both!" Lord Tywin argued.

"No matter what he is or what you perceive him to have done he will always be our son. You have denied him, and for that you cannot be the man I left on my deathbed. My Lion of Lannister."

"You are not my beloved Joanna, that much is clear." Tywin deadpanned. "What are you...spirit?" he demanded, his happiness he had seen at the return of his beloved that had been stolen from him fading and the anger at this deception by this apparition rising within him.

"I am the Ghost of winter past."

"The past of the Kingdoms?"

"Only yours, Lord Lannister."

"No, whatever you are it is wrong for Joanna to refer to me that way. Call me Tywin." He commanded of the figure before him

"As you wish, Tywin." The figure responded,

He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

"Your welfare." said the figure posing as his beloved.

Tywin expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The figure must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:

"Your recovery, then. Take heed."

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

"Rise. And walk with me, Tywin." She falsely smiled.

It would have been in vain for Tywin to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted for everyday purposes, that bed was warm; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, coiat and gloves; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand would be, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in appeal.

"I am but a mortal man," Tywin insisted, "and liable to great heights."

"Bear but a touch of my hand there,'" said Joanna, laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this."

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. King's Landing had entirely vanished. Not a sight of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground. They passed over the blacked fields, but something peculiar happened: the ashes receded and the crops began to grow upon them again as they passed over The crown and River lands over the Golden Tooth and came to Lord Tywin's one true home.

"Casterly Rock!" exclaimed Tywin, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him.

The Spirit of Joanna gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten.

"Your lip is trembling, Tywin" said the spirit. "And what is that upon your cheek?" Tywin muttered something to himself, with an unusual gasping in his voice; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would. "You recollect the way?" inquired the Figure.

"Remember it." cried Tywin with passion"I could walk through the entirety of Castely Rock blindfolded!.2

"Strange to have forgotten you could, Tywin. For so many years." observed Joanna. "Let us go on."

They walked along the road towards the Lion's Mouth; the heavily armoured Lion Helms not noticing them, Tywin recognising every gate, and room, and rock; until a little garrison tower appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its Sept, and an artificial waterfall that had been in the Rock since the Age of Heroes. Some shaggy horses now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country pigs and carts driven by farmers. All these squires were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad yards were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.

"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said Joanna. "They have no idea we can see or hear them." Tywin looked up at the outer walls of the rock and noticed the Great banner looming over the others: The three headed dragon, Tywin wondered how far back they were. He received his answer by observing the flags of his vassals underneath that proud golden lion._ A golden laurel wreath upon a striped blue and gold field. House Algood. A Boar spread upon a brown field. House Crakehall. A hooded man upon a fiery shield and a coal background. House Banefort. A red lion with two tails upon a white shield…House Reyne. That far back?_

The squires came on; and as they came, Tywin knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them? Why did his pale emerald eye glisten and his heart leap up as they went past? Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other a blessed Midwinter, as they parted at cross-roads and goodbyes, for their several homes? What was midwinter to the castle's Lord Paramount? Out upon midwinter! What good had it ever done to him?

"The Maester's chambers are not quite deserted," said the figure of his deceased beloved. "A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still." Tywin confessed it. And he wanted to sob for it, but he was a Lannister.

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered path on top of the Rock, and soon approached the chambers made of dull red brick, with a little weathercock mounted on the roof, and a bell hanging upon it. They were large chambers for they held the family of the Warden of the West, richest man in the Kingdoms, but one of broken fortunes at the time; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows cracked. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables far below them; and the coach-houses and sheds were beginning to run into disarray. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for entering the hall draped with lion banners, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them properly furnished yet cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light.

They went, the figure and Lord Tywin, across the hall, to a door at the back of the quarter of the gargantuan castle. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Tywin sat down and was saddened to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

Not a latent echo in the fortress, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard outside, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one hopeless poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire. The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at stood outside the castle, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by a Zorse laden with silk.

"Could that be…It is, it's Xoho." Tywin exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's old Xoho, from the Summer Isles. Yes, I remember. One Springtime, I was left here all alone for the first time, just like that. And Valion," said Tywin," and his wild brother, Orzo; there they go. And who is that, there; don't you see him?" To hear the Lord Paramount of these lands expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between restrainment for his honour as a Lannister; and the joy and mirth of a child, and to see his heightened and excited face would have been a surprise to his council members in King's Landing and Lannisport indeed.

"There's the Raven.'" cried Tywin. "White feathers and black eyes, there he is." Tywin thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor boy." and cried again. "I wish," Tywin muttered, locking his hands behind his back, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff "No, never mind." He mumbled.

"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit of Joanna.

"Nothing," said Lord Tywin.

"Come now, you can tell me, Tywin." She smiled. No matter how fake it might be, Tywin could never resist her smile.

"Very well. There was a boy singing a Midwinters Carol outside the Red Keep last night. I ordered him barred from the premises. I should like to have given him a stag, that's all." Tywin shrugged off.

The Figure smiled thoughtfully and waved her hand, saying as it did so "Let us see another Season."

Tywin's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the paint changed; ornaments and furniture moved around the room, and the carpets were shown instead; but how all this was brought about. Tywin knew no more than anyone else might do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home to their various keeps and holdfasts for the harvest collection before the peophecy of the Starks was fulfilled. He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.

Tywin looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door. It opened and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressing him as her "Dear, dear brother. I have come to bring you home, dear brother." said the golden haired child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home."

"Home, little Genna." returned the boy.

"Yes." said the child, full of glee. "Home, for good. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than others can be, our home's like one of the Seven Heavens. He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said yes. You should, and sent me in a carriage to bring you. And you're to be a man grown." said the child, opening her eyes," and are never to come back here; but first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world."

"You are quite a woman, little Genna." exclaimed the boy.

She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, with nothing to do, accompanied her.

A terrible voice in the hall cried. "Bring down Master Tywin's box, there." and in the hall appeared the Maester of Casterly Rock himself, who glared on the little Lordling with a ferocious arrogance, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the old well of a shivering shop that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy tablet, and administered instalments of those substances to the young people. At the same time, sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of something to the messenger who answered that by thanking the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he would rather not. The children and their brothers bade the Maester good-bye willingly; and getting into it, drove happily down the gardens of Casterly rock: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.

"Always a delicate creature, from whom a breath might have withered," said the Figure. "But she has a large heart."

"So she has," whispered Tywin. "You're right. I will not lie about it, Spirit. Gods forbid."

"She is a woman," said the Figure, "and had, as I can recall, children.'

"Four sons." Tywin returned.

"True,'" said the Ghost. "Your nephews."

Tywin seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, "Yes."

Although they had but that moment left the Rock behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of King's Landing once more, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battle for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Midwinter time again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.

The Ghost stopped at a certain chamber door, and asked Tywin if he knew it.

"Know it.'" Snickered Tywin. "I was a cupbearer and squire here." Tywin recalled the experience. Once he opposed Father's decision to betroth Genna to a Frey, Lord Tytos shipped him off to be a cupbearer to the King. Fortunately, making friends with Prince Aerys would prove rather useful in the Lord of Lannister's future.

They walked into the chamber. At the sight of a gentleman in a dragon crown, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Tywin cried in great excitement:

"King Jaehaerys? Gods bless, I never thought I would see Jaehaerys again." King Jaehaerys, father of Aerys, for whom Tywin was a cupbearer and squire for was a sickly and pale man but he was a decent king. Certainly the Dragonlord come again when compared with his successor. He laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence; and called out in a comfortable, weak, small and yet, jovial voice:

"Ah there you are little lion. Would you be so kind as to fetch those papers from Lord Bolton?" Tywin's former self, now a young child, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-apprentice.

"Luthor Tyrell, another cupbearer for the king, to be sure.2 said Tywin to the spirit. "Seven hells, yes. There he is. We were fond of one another. His little accident was so distressing for me." _Less so for the Lady Olenna._

"Alright, my boys." said Jaehaerys. "No more work tonight. Midwinters Eve, Luthor. Seven hells, its Midwinter Tywin. Let's have the curtains up," cried the young King, with a sharp clap of his hands. You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged across the room with the shutters -one, two, three -had them up in their places - four, five, six - barred them and pinned then - seven, eight, nine - and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like jousting-horses. "Ha!" cried sickly Jaehaerys, stepping down from the high desk, with surprising agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here. Luthor, Tywin, here."

Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Jaehaerys looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the fireplace was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. After that, they and the Kingsguard outside the door escorted the King to the Throne room for a great ball that was occurring there tonight for Midwinter.

In came a lute player with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Queen Shaera with one vast substantial smile. In came all the lord and ladies of the Seven Kingdoms, greater and lesser both. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and every how.

Away they all went, a hundred couples at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. When this result was brought about the king was clapping his hands to stop the dance, and cried out, "Well done." and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a brand-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was wine, and there was a great piece of Roast, and there were great pieces of pig and sheep, and there were pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind. The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him) struck up Ser Roger Coverlet. Then the King stood out to dance with Queen Shaera. Top couples, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many - ah, four times - the King would have been a match for them, and so would the Queen. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, no one could give any. A positive light appeared to issue from Jaehaerys' calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them next. And when Jaehaerys and Shaera had gone all through the dance; advance and retire with both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your place; King Jaehaerys cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs and came upon his feet again without a stagger.

When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. The dragons took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wishing them a Merry Midwinter. When everybody had retired but the two squired and Prince Aerys, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their chambers.

During the whole of this time, Tywin had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Luthor were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost of Joanna, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

"A small matter," said the apparition, "to make these silly nobles so full of gratitude."

"Small…" echoed Tywin.

The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Jaehaerys. "Why, is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"

"It isn't that," said Tywin, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then. The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune." He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.

"What is it, Tywin?" asked Joanna.

"Nothing in particular," affirmed Tywin.

"Something, I would think." Joanna giggled

"No," echoed Tywin, "No. I should like to be able to say a word or two to one of my guardsmen just now. That's all."

His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Tywin and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

"Tywin, my time grows short," observed the Spirit. 2Quick."

This was not addressed to Tywin, or to any one whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Tywin saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. He reckoned around the time of the Defiance of Duskendale. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion for power that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning-dress in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of his beloved. The girl was a sweet young cupbearer Tywin had an emerald eye for, before his arranged marriage to his one true love was revealed to him. He wondered what had become of her.

"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little. Another hero has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just reason to grieve."

"What hero has displaced you?"

"A golden one."

"This is the way the world workd." he said. "There is nothing so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it tries to condemn with such severity as a love of riches and wealth."

"You fear the world too much, Tywin." she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being in a powerful; position. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, eternal power for your legacy; it engrosses you. Am I incorrect?"

"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you." She shook her head.

"Am I?"

"Our agreement is an old one. It was made when we were both poorer and more content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our fortunes by the correct work. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man."

"I was a boy," he said impatiently.

"Your own feeling tells you that you _were_ not what you _are_," she returned. "I am. That promise of happiness was when we were together and fraught with misery now that we are two. How often I have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you."

"Have I ever wanted relief from this?" Lord Tywin implored

"In words. No. Never."

"In what, then?"

"In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "Tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now."

He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in spite of himself. But he said with a struggle. "You do not think so?" Tywin inquired.

"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered, "Heaven knows. When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can I even believe that you would choose a poor girl -you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow. I do and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were."

He was about to speak; but with her head turned from him, she resumed.

"You may - the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will - have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen." She left him, and they parted.

"Spirit." Said Tywin, "show me no more. Show me home. Do you delight in torturing me?"

"One more, Tywin." exclaimed the Ghost.

"No." cried Tywin. "No more, I do not wish to see it. Show me no more."

But the relentless figure held him in both her arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Lord Tywin believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly noisy, for there were more children there, than Tywin in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the sings, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.

The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to one of them. Though I never could have been so rude, no. I wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with Midwinter toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter. The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package was received. The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter. The immense relief of finding this a false alarm. The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy. They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.

And now Tywin looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.

"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."

"Who was it?"

"Guess."

"How can I?" she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed.

"Lord Tywin Lannister. Lord Tywin it was. I saw him at a public execution. He presided beside King Robert, Seven save him. I could scarcely help seeing him. His wife's dead and he seems quite alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe."

"Joanna." said Tywin in a bitter voice, "remove me from this place."

"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me."

"Remove me." Lord Tywin exclaimed," I cannot stand this."

He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.

"Leave me. Take me back. Haunt me no longer." He spoke, venom upon his tongue.

In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Lord Tywin observed that her light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him. The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; but though Tywin pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. His hand relaxed and he barely had time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.


	3. Stave Three: The Second of the Spirits

_Stave Three: The Second of the Three Spirits_

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Tywin had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to him through the last Dragon King's intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands, and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For, he wished to challenge the next Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise. Though there was little that could surprise Tywin Lannister, anymore.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who trail themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Lord Tywin quite as hardily as this, it is hardly beyond belief that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a dagger and a grumpkin would have astonished him very much.

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the Bell struck one, and no shape appeared, he was disappointed. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think - as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too - at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.

The moment Tywin's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed, yet he was sceptical of it. He recognised the voice but one more tried to deny it.

It was his own tower. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Tywin's time, or Aerys', or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see, fat as a pig, bearded as a hermit who bore a glowing torch, in shape of a stag's head, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Lord Tywin, as he came peeping round the door.

"Come in." exclaimed the Figure. "Come in, and know me better, Ty!" the booming voice exclaimed. It was a voice he never wished to hear again. _If he believes he can pat me on the back again, I swear before the Gods…._

Lord Tywin entered timidly, and hung his head before the late Usurper. He was not the dogged man he had been; and though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.

"I am the lord of the seven Kingdoms," said the Spirit. "Now bow, you shits!" Robert laughed, a beer tankard in his right hand.

Tywin simply looked on, unflinching and unmoving. Robert was clothed in his simple yellow robe, or mantle, bordered with black fur. A golden crown with stag antlers wrestled upon his forehead. The garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare. Its dark black curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

"Oh, Good-Father. How long has it been?!" exclaimed Robert.

"Too soon, Your Grace." Tywin bitterly answered.

The Ghost of Winter Present rose. Though why Aerys chose this incarnation, Tywin could not know. He supposed, Robert always was concerned with living now; which made securing Tywin's legacy that much easier. He dreaded the Spirit of the future.

"Robert," said Tywin passively. "Take me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have anything to teach me, let me learn from it. Your Grace."

"Touch my robe." Robert commanded, but Tywin gave him a look that said "_Not for all the Gold From Casterly Rock to Asshai_ but reluctantly Tywin did as he was told, and held it fast.

Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the slum of Flea Bottom on Midwinters morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Westeros had, by one will, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have found hard to diffuse.

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were happy and full of gidiness; calling out to one another from the rooftops, and now and then exchanging a foolish snowball - better-natured missile far than many a jest- laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The butchers' shops were still half open, and the fruiterers were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Ibeneese Red Priests, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might water as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shuffling ankle deep through withered leaves; there were folk from all over the Crownlands, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.

The Markets. Oh the Markets. Nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of arbor red and gold were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices from the Free cities of Lys and Braavos so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the plums of the Reach blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Midwinter dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the Stallman and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Midwinter daws to peck at if they chose.

But soon the steeples called good people all, to the Great Sept, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and with their most solemn and cheerful faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, countless people, carrying their dinners to the baker' shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit of King Robert very much, for he stood with Lord Tywin in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Midwinters Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.

In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were closed; and yet there was a general shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.

"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from that torch you seem to have acquired?. Asked Tywin.

"There is. My own." Robert guffawed.

"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Lord Tywin.

"To any kindly given. To a poor one most." The Spirit of Robert Baratheon shrugged.

"Why a poor one most?" asked the Lord of Casterly Rock

"Because they need it most." He said, with a more serious tone than Tywin thought Robert was capable of.

"Robert…" began Tywin, after a moment's thought, "I wonder why you, of all those in the Kingdoms and beyond, should desire to limit the Smallfolks opportunities for fun?"

"ME?!." cried the Spirit.

"You would deprive these people of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they are able to dine at all," explained Lord Tywin. "Wouldn't you, Your Grace?"

"I?" whispered the Spirit.

"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day." Said Tywin. "And it comes to the same thing. Forgive me if I am wrong, Your Grace. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your kind," said Tywin, uncertain of the ghost's intentions.

"There are some upon the earth," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, not the Royal House of Baratheon that I was of but the spirits and those who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on them, not us. Good-father."

Tywin promised that he would remember; and they went on, as they had been before, into the slums of King's Landing. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost of the late King (which Tywin had already observed), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off the power he had, or else it was his own kind, drunken, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all men, that led him straight to the Crimson cloaks; for there he went, and took his son's Hand with him, unwillingly grasping to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob's dwelling with the sprinkling of his torch. Think of that. Bob had but fifteen stars himself: called "bob" by the smallfolk. He pocketed it on Saturdays but with only fifteen copies to his pious name; and yet the Ghost of Midwinters Present blessed his four-roomed house.

Then up rose Bob's wife, dressed out but poorly in a cotton gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Bertha, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller children, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young twins danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.

"What has got your father then.' Said Bob's wife. "And your brother, Tiny Tim. And Martha wasn't as late any other Day by half-an-hour.'

"Here's Martha, mother." said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

"Why, bless you, my dear how late you are." Said the mother, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with authoritative zeal.

"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother."

"Well. Never mind so long as you are come," said their mother. "Sit down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Maiden bless you." She smiled at her little ones.

"Look, look. There's father coming!" cried the two young twins, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"

So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his lion-crested armour freshly polished and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.

"Where's Martha?' cried Bob, who Lord Tywin now recognised as the guard at his door.

"Not coming," said his wife.

"Not coming?" exclaimed Bob, with a sudden declension in his spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from the Red Keep. and had come home wild. "Not coming upon Midwinters Day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, even if it was only a joke; so she came out early from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Children bundled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked the mother, when she had rallied Bob on his naiveté, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content. It surprised Tywin to see how different one of his soldiers could be; turning from brutes who would burn down a village without a thought to this type of man.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself in the barracks so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped His High Holiness saw him in the Winter Worship, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon this most joyous time, who can make made lame beggars walk, and blind men see." Bob explained as he ruffled Tiny Tim's hair. Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob was removing his leather gauntlets he noticed they were capable of being made more shabby - compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter, and the two universally troublesome young twins went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high spirits.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course - and in truth it was something very like it in that house. The lady of the household made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Bertha sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young children set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and a grace to each of the Seven was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Bob's wife, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all-round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young ones, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah.

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed, as the mother said with great delight (surveying one small part of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last. Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Children in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows. But now, the plates being changed by Miss Bertha, their mother left the room alone - too nervous to bear witnesses - to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough. Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose - a supposition at which the two young twins became livid. All sorts of horrors were supposed.

The pudding was out of the pan, a smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute Bob's wife entered - flushed, but smiling proudly with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy. Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by his wife since their marriage in the Rebellion. His wife said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any of them would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the family drew round the hearth, in what Bob the Crimson cloak called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as the golden goblets of the family they served would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

"A Blessed Midwinter to us all, my loves. Gods bless us!" To which all the family re-echoed.

"Seven save us. Every one!' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him. At this point Tywin leaned in closer suddenly feeling concerned for the child's life with no idea for why. The cold heart of Casterly rock found himself furrowing his brow at the suffering of this little child, one that was but a singular force in th sea of souls in Tywin Lannister's Kingdoms.

"Your Grace, Robert, Spirit, whatever you are." Said Tywin, with a saddened voice he did not realise himself capable of; with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if the cripple will live."

The spirit of the Trident's Demon took a jug from his cup. "I see a vacant seat," finally replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will surely perish."

"No," Whispered Tywin, almost unheard as a mouse. "Oh, no. Say he will be spared."

"If things remain as I have seen them," returned the Ghost, "Then naught will change. What then does it matter? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Tywin Lannister hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with shame and grief. "Tywin," said the Ghost of Robert, "Will it be you to decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of the Heavens, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh Gods! To hear the Insect on the leaf among his hungry brothers in the dust." Robert drunkenly pronounced, slapping Tywin on the back again. But Tywin barely acknowledged these actions now. Tywin simply nodded to the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on hearing his own name.

"Lord Tywin." said Bob; "I'll give you the Hand, lord Tywin; the Founder of the Feast."

"The Founder of the Feast indeed." Spat his wife, reddening. "I wish had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it. He might be Protector of the realm, but he'll need thick bloody walls to protect him from me!"

"Anna," said Bob, "the children. Midwinters Day.'

"Aye, it's Midwinters Day, I'm sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Lord Tywin Lannister. You know he is, Bob. Nobody knows it better than you do." His wife pleaded of him.

"Beloved," was Bob's mild answer, "midwinter."

"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," responded his wife, "not for his. Long life to him. A blessed Midwinter and a bountiful spring. He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt. To Lord Tywin, To Midwinter, to Queen Margaery and His Grace the King! Seven save them."

The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn't care a copper for it. Tywin was the Other of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the household, which was not dispelled for full five minutes.

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Tywin the Terrible being done with. Bob told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, two full Silver Stags weekly. The two young ones laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favour when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a miller's, then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess and a northern lord some days before, and how the lord was much about as tall as Peter; at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a rich family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting. Tywin had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. Tywin had never been caring on what people thought of him: _"The Lion does not concern himself with the opinions of the sheep." _A phrase he tended to live by: do what is right for the family. But seeing them, huddled in a hovel struck a chord with Tywin that he could not explain. All he knew was that he had become deeply saddened by the reality of the situation some of his people were facing in the slums of King's Landing.

By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily, and as Tywin and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and there a group of girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter - artful witches, well they knew it in a glow.

But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, the Ghost exulted. How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach. The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Winter.

And now, without a word of warning from the Spirit, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself whosesoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

"Where are we, Robert?" Asked Tywin.

"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they knew me. See."

A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Midwinters carol - it had been a very old song when he was a boy - and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Tywin hold his robe, not as reluctant as he was, and passing on above the moor, sped and withered. Not at sea. To sea. To Tywin's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds - born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their bitter hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Midwinter in their can of soup; and one of them, the elder too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be struck up in a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea on, on and on until, being far away, as he told Lord Tywin, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations but every man among them hummed a Winters tune, or had a Winters thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day ; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he knew for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.

But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Midwinter in their can of grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

It was a great surprise to Tywin Lannister, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it was a great surprise to Lord Tywin, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to him to recognise it as his own squire's and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same squire with approving affability, still chugging on that never ending tankard.

"Ha, ha." laughed Tywin's squire. If there should happen, by any unlikely chance, to be a man more blest in a laugh than the Great Lion's Squire, then most peoples should like to hear it.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Tywin's squire laughed in this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions One of Cersei's handmaidens (and the Boy's wife), laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out heartily.

"Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha."

"He said that the season was nonsense, as I live." Cried Tywin's squire. "He believed it too."

"More shame for him, Fred." Said Cersei's handmaiden indignantly. She was very pretty for a Frey: exceedingly pretty. One of the latter arrangements for the Red Wedding, Cersei would take one of Walder's daughters…or granddaughters, or nieces as a handmaiden. It hardly mattered: Lord Walder had more relatives than House Lannister had bannermen. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed - as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking; but satisfactory.

"He's a comical old fellow," said Fred, "That's the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his insults carry their own, and I have nothing to say against him, Ryella."

"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Ryella. "At least you always tell me so."

"What of that, my love." Said Fred. "The wealth of Casterly Rock is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking - ha, ha, ha. - that he is ever going to benefit us with it. If the old cat croaks, his squires will get a rather healthy "settlement fund." Ha ha ha!"

"I have no time for him,'" observed Ryella . Her sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.

"Oh, I have." Said Fred. "I am sorry for him; I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims. He does, always. Here, he hates us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the problem? He won't lose much of a dinner.'

"Indeed, I think he'll lose a very good dinner," interrupted Ryella. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.

"Well. I'm glad to hear it," said Ryella, "because I haven't great faith in these house keeps. What do you say, Topper?"

Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Ryella's sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.

Whereas Ryella's sister - the plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the roses - blushed.

"Do go on, Fred," said Ryella, clapping her hands. "He never finishes what he begins. He is such a ridiculous fellow." Perhaps she simply hadn't heard "The Rains of Castamere" yet. Fred revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was unanimously followed.

"I was only going to say," said Tywin's squire, "that the consequence of his dislike to us, and not making peace with us is, as I think, simply a means for him to lose some pleasant moments, which could do no harm to him. I am sure he loses better companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old tower, or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may despise Midwinter till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it. If he finds me going there, in good temper, season after season, and saying, 'Lord Tywin, how are you.' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his guards ten stags, that's something; and I think I shook him yesterday." It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Tywin. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at, he encouraged them in their happiness, and passed the bottle joyously.

After tea, they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew what they were about, I can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over it. Ryella played well upon the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been familiar to the child who fetched Lord Tywin from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Joanna. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the crimson banner upon which he had laid the body of dead King Aerys and his ilk.

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at this season, when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop. There was first a game at "come into my castle." naturally. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Tywin's Squire; and that the Spirit of King Robert knew it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the respect of the lord he served.

Ryella was not one of the "come into my castle" party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Tywin were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was exceptional, and to the secret joy of Fred, beat her sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as could have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Tywin, for, wholly forgetting the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too; for the sharpest needle, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Tywin; blunt as he took it in his head to be.

The Spirit was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this could not be done.

"Come now, Robert," argued Lord Tywin. "Merely one half hour, only one."

It was a Game called Yes and No, where Fred had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and bared it's teeth sometimes, and lived in Casterly Rock, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this squire burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

"I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know what it is."

"What is it?" cried Fred.

"It's Lord Tywin, the Great LION on the rock!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a cat?" ought to have been "Yes" in as much as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from lord Tywin, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

"He has given us plenty of laughter, I am sure," said Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink to his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, "To Tywin Lannister, Warden of the West and Hand to Tommen!"'

"To the Great Lion." they cried.

"A Blessed Midwinter and bountiful Spring to the old man, whatever he is." said his squire. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it, nevertheless. My Lord."

Tywin had slowly become so happy and light of heart, that he would have blessed the company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his squire, and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In whorehouses, garrisons, and jails, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Tywin his principles.

It was a long night, if it were only one night, but Tywin had his doubts of this, because the Holiday appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Lord Tywin remained unaltered in his outward form, Robert grew older, clearly older. His laughs few quitter and his chugs turned to humble sips. Tywin had observed this change in the King, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.

"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Tywin.

"Aye, My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends tonight."

"Tonight." Remarked Tywin

"Tonight at midnight. And my time draws near, good-father." Robert sullenly explained.

The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.

"Forgive me, Your Grace." said Tywin, looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, that does not belonging to you, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?"

"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."

From the folding of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Tywin started back, a warm glow in his pale emerald eye, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

"How many bastards did you father?" Tywin could say no more, but Robert laughed hollowly.

"They aren't mine, they are of mankind," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their kindred, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it." warned the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it to you. Admit it for your inane purposes, and make it worse. And accept the end."

"Have they no refuge or resource?" implored Tywin.

"Are there no prisons?" retorted the Spirit of King Robert, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?" The bell struck twelve.

Tywin looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of Old King Aerys, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn figure, darkness shining off like the light of the sun, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him. Bearing a golden crossbow.


	4. Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits

_Stave Four: The Last of the Spirits._

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. Tywin could not see its face, body or shape. Every time he tried to obtain a glimpse of the spectre it's shadow seemed to blind him in a fashion unlike anything Lord Tywin had ever saw. But through his finger covering his eyes, it finally occurred to him that the figure was shorter in stature than he had originally ascertained. But still, he carried the threating presence of the Mountain and the terror of Balerion the Black Dread. He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved. All he could see was that in his left hand was a set of five long, bony, wispy figures. In the other was a golden crossbow with a lion's head.

"If Joanna was the Ghost of Winter that has passed and Robert the present; I can only assume you are of the future, The Ghost of that which is yet to come." Said Lord Tywin. The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. "You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in time before us?" The Lord of the Westerlands pursued. Through the shining darkness Tywin could see a rippling in the uppermost areas of the figure, which he took for a nod. That was the only answer he received. "I will take your silence as a positive response." Tywin mumbled.

Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Lord Tywin Lannister feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit pauses a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to recover from the shine. It passed eerily past Tywin and as its cloaked back was turned to him, the shine was downcast and Tywin could look at the phantom at least. Even though he knew he was much shorter, he did cast a very large shadow which made him look taller than he was.

But Tywin was all the worse for this. It intrigued him with a vague horror, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes that were intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

"Spirit"' he exclaimed, "I could say that I have come to fear you more than any spectre I have seen this night. But as I understand it, your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear your company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak, do me that honour."

It neither replied nor turned around but outstretched it's bony hand. The hand was pointed straight before them.

"Lead on then." said Lord Tywin. "The night is wasting away, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit of the unknown." Tywin said, one hand by his side; another outstretched to the shade.

The Phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Tywin followed in the shadow of its robe, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along. They scarcely seemed to enter the city but the city rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they were, in the heart of it; on Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as Lord Tywin had seen them often. The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of red cloaks inside the Great Hall, in the Red Keep. Observing that the spectre's hand was pointed to them, Tywin advanced to listen to their talk.

"No," said a great man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much about it, either way. I only know he's dead."

"When did he die?" inquired another.

"Last night, I heard from one of the Tower guardsmen."

"What happened?" asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he'd never die."

The first guard said something inaudible to Tywin but the others in the group pulled solemn faces at the response

"What has he done with his whore?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose.

"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again. "Queen Cunt threw her corpse in the river, perhaps. I haven't seen her. That's all I know."

This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

"It's likely to be a very expensive funeral," said the same speaker; "though upon my life I don't know of anybody who'd want to go to it unless they have the name 'Lannister'. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer."

"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed, if I make one." Another laugh.

"Well, I just don't care, after all," said the first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll offer to guard the King, if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for I guarded the Queen for the first ten years of Robert's rule. Farewell, you baseborn whoresons" he announced as he replaced his helm and left the Hall. Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Tywin could recognise some of them, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation. The Phantom glided on into a street. Its lanky finger pointed to two persons meeting. Lord Tywin listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of shipbuilding: very wealthy, and of great importance. They always made a point of standing high in his esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business point of view.

"How are you?" said one.

"How are you." returned the other.

"Well." said the first. "The Lion has got his own at last, hey."

"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"

"For the season. You're not a skater, I suppose?"

"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning."

Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

Lord Tywin was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Aerys, or even anyone else Tywin had known in his lifetime, for that was Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these riddles easy.

He looked about in that very place for his own image; but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.

They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the city, where Tywin had never been before, although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, and misery.

Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove, made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.

Lord Tywin and the shining Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by the sight of them, than they had been upon the recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first." cried she who had entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance. If we haven't all met here without meaning this."

"You couldn't have met in a cleaner place," grumbled old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the shop. You were made free of it long ago, you know; and the other two aren't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ah, How it reeks. There isn't such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha. We're all suitable to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the store. Come into the parlour." The store was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.

While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.

"What odds then. What unbelievable odds, Mrs Dilber." said the woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did."

"That's true, indeed." said the laundress. "No man more so."

"Why then, don't stop staring as if you was afraid, woman; who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose."

"No, indeed." deadpanned Mrs Dilber and the man together. "We should hope not."

"Very well." cried the woman. "That's enough. Who's the worse for the loss of a few things? Not a dead man, I suppose."

"No, indeed." said Mrs Dilber, laughing.

"If he wanted to keep them after he was dead," pursued the woman, "why wasn't he more active in his life. If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying there gasping and shitting Lannister gold, alone by himself."

"It's the truest word that ever was spoke." said Mrs Dilber. "It's a judgment on him."

"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the woman "and it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe." But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come.

"That's your version," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another copper, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?" Mrs Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.

"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock off half-a-stag."

"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

"What do you call this." said Joe. "Crimson Bed-curtains."

"Ah." returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains."

"You don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with her lying there?" said Joe.

"Yes I did," replied the woman. "Why not?"

"You were born to make a fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets, now."

"His blankets?" asked Joe.

"Whose else's do you think?!" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to take cold without them, I dare say."

"I hope he didn't die of anything catching. Eh." said old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.

"He died on the toilet," returned the woman. "Besides, I ain't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one too. The Queen'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me.'

"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.

"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it with better ones. If calico ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did in the casket going west."

Tywin Lannister listened to this dialogue in horror and disgust. As they sat grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he viewed them with a detestation and contempt, which could hardly have been greater, though the demons, marketing the corpse itself.

"Ha, ha." laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is the end of it, you see. He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead. Ha, ha, ha."

"Spirit." Said Tywin, shuddering from head to foot. "I understand now. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Seven hells, what is this display."

He trembled and stumbled, for the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language. The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Tywin glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

Tywin glanced towards the Phantom, but quickly receded. He did notice its steady hand was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon tywin's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike. And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal. No voice pronounced these words in Tywin's ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts. Avarice, hard-dealing, griping cares. They have brought him to a rich end, truly.

He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed: Tywin did not dare to think.

"Spectre." he said, "This is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson, trust me." He shallowly commanded

Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

"I understand," Tywin returned, "and I would do it, if I could. But I cannot. I am the Hand of the King, yet I do not have the power for this."

Again it seemed to look upon him through the shining darkness.

"If there is anyone in any of the Kingdoms, who feels a distraught caused by this man's death," said Tywin quite agonised, "show them to me, Spirit, I beseech you."

The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a faceless mother and her children were.

She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked up and down the room started at every sound, she looked out from the window, glanced at the clock and tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play. At last the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door, and met a strange man; a man whose face was clear and it's features missing like the others, though it was clear he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.

He sat down to the dinner that had been boarding for him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.

"Is it good…" she said, "or bad?"

"We are quite ruined."

"No. There is hope yet."

"If he relents," she said, amazed, "There is. Nothing is past hope, if such a miracle has happened."

"He is past relenting," said the man. "He is dead."

She was a mild and patient creature if her mind spoke truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion of her heart.

"The half-drunken woman I told you of last night said, he was not only very ill, but dying, then."

"To who will our debt be transferred?"

"I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money; and even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a Hand in his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts."

Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's death. The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.

"Let me see some heartache connected with a death," said Tywin "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for me."

The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Lord Tywin looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob's house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the children seated round the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little twins were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet.

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her face.

"The colour hurts my eyes" she said.

"They're better again," said Bob's wife. "It makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time."

"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think he has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings, mother."

They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once: "I have known him walk - I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed."

"And so have I," mumbled Peter. "Rather Often."

"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had they all.

"But he was very light to carry,' she resumed, intent upon her work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the door."

She hurried out to meet him in his lion crested cuirass; and Tint Tim in his comforter - he had need of it, poor fellow - came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young twins got upon his knees and laid, each child a little cheek, against his face, as if they said, "Don't worry about it, father. Don't be sad."

Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of his beloved wife and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

"Sunday. You went today, then." said his wife.

"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have gone. It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child.' cried Bob. "My son."

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it, not even the proud lions on his shoulders could give any comfort. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart perhaps than they were.

He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Midwinter. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of someone having been there, lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.

They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Lord Tywin's squire, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little "just a little down you know," said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. "On which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, ser.' He said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By the bye, how he ever knew that, I don't know."

"Knew what, my dear."

"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.

"Everybody knows that." said Peter.

"Very well observed, my boy." smiled Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily sorry,' he said,' for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way,' he said, giving me his card,' that's where I live. Come see me.' Now, it wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt for us."

"I'm sure he's a good soul." Said his wife.

"You would be surer of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised if he got Peter a good position in the Lannister guard."

"Only hear that, Peter," said Bob's wife.

"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company with someone, and setting up for himself."

"Get away with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.

"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days; though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim - shall we - or this first parting that there was among us."

"Never, father." they all cried.

"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it."

"No, never, father." they all cried again.

"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy."

His wife kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young twins kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, your childish essence was from the Gods.

"Spectre," whispered Tywin, "something tells me that you will be leaving soon. I know it, but I know not how or when. Tell me what man had died."

The Spirit of That Which Is Yet To Come acknowledged him, as before - though at a different time, he thought indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future - into the resorts of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired, until besought by Tywin to stay a moment.

"This place," said Tywin, "is where I have lived during my tenure as Hand, and has been for a length of time. I see the doors now. Let me see what I shall become, in days to pass."

Tywin could sense that the dread Spirit had stopped; he knew it's hand was pointed elsewhere.

"My chamber is right there," Tywin exclaimed. "Why do you turn away?" The inexorable finger underwent no change. Tywin hastened to the window of his study, and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before. He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it through a sea of darkness until they returned to the rock and Tywin knew where the spirit had taken them. He paused to look round before entering.

The Hall of Heroes, where every Lannister from the House of Casterly to King Lann to Tywin's own Father, Tytos was interned for all time. Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by stone; overrun by symbols of golden lions, and further on a strange sigil that Tywin guessed had belonged to the Casterly's. A worthy place for the Lions on the Rock.

The Spirit stood among the vaults, his back to Tywin, and pointed down to one. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.

"Before I go to that Grace at which you point," began Tywin, "humble me with one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, and only that." Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Tywin slowly crept towards it, trembling as he went; and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name; 'Lord Tywin of the House Lannister, the First of his Name, the Lord of Casterly Rock, Shield of Lannisport, Warden of the West, Thrice Named Hand of the King, Saviour and Sacker of the self-same city.'

"I am the man who lay forgotten on that bed, am I not?" he cried, upon his knees. Tywin had always found it his philosophy that being loved was pointless; could love from the people give you food or warmth. No, better to be harsh and effective than loved and weak. But as Tywin stood in that infamous Hall; his own gravestone staring at him he became overcome with a great sense of fear and dread; the likes of which he had never known. Was this his fate, to be a gravestone remembered by naught? Tyrion would leap for joy if he heard Tywin perished. Would Cersei weep for him, or smile now no one could hold her back? Would Jaime take up his rightful place or remain a bodyguard? Who would remember him, who could have anything in their heart for the Great Lion on the Rock? The spectre's finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.

`No..." was all Tywin was able to breathlessly murmur; practically silent among his own grave. The finger continued to point.

"Spirit." he said, staring up at the shining darkness unafraid, "hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for the events of this night. Why show me this, if I am past all hope of redemption?" For the first time the bony hand appeared to shake.

"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it: "Your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change what you have shown me this night, by an altered life."

The kind hand trembled.

"I will honour the spirit and goodwill of this season in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three of you shall strive within me. I will not deny the lessons that they teach. Tell me I am capable of that!" Tywin pleaded, for the first time since he could remember.

The spirit continued to make no reply but raised the crossbow and pointed it at Tywin who raised his arms in resistance "No…I beg you, no!" he cried. The spectre mumbled something he could not make out bar "…_I have always been…"_ before firing a bolt. The pain seared through Tywin's side as his eyes began to close but before he did he noticed the spirit's shadow recede and one of his eyes turn to a sparkling emerald.


	5. Stave Five: The End of It

_Stave Five: The End of it._

Tywin awoke with a thud, tumbling from his chair and found himself staring into the shard of a broken glass. He shot away in the opposite direction with a thundering thud. At that point a guard came hurrying in towards his lord. "Lord Tywin, are you hurt?" he asked helping Tywin to his feet.

"Hurt? No, my dear man. Why, I feel better than I have in many years!" Lord Tywin _smiled_, a most unusual feature. "Now fetch my morning meal, make sure the bacon is thoroughly cooked!" he cried. The guard simply bowed and retreated from the romm with a bewildered look on his face but what did it matter now? This is what he would live for; to show them that he was not the man he was. Just as Aerys had said!

He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.

"They are not torn down." Beamed Tywin , folding one of his bed-curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here - I am here - the shadows of the things that would have been, have been dispelled. They have been. I know they will." His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.

"I don't know what to do." He cried, laughing and crying in the same breath. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A blessed winter to everybody. A bountiful spring to all seven kingdoms!." He had frisked behind his esk, and was now sitting there: perfectly whezing.

Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.

"I don't know what day it is." Said Tywin. "I don't know how long I've been among the Spirits. I doubt if I know anything ow,I'm quite a baby. Never mind. It hardly matters. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo here." His breakfast was brought in by a scullery maid, who upon seeing tywin's ar to ear grin pratically ran out of his chambers. As he nibbled on the bacon, he pondered on how to spend the day. Finally, he walked out and as his Honoir guards stood to attention he gave them a friendly pat on the shoulder and some kind words. Along the way he gave warm words of encouragement and greetings to all he came across.

Through the storm that had, for the most part, died down he could ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash. His high holiness must be in good spirits today! Oh, glorious, glorious.

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious.

"You, what's today." Asked Tywin, calling downward to a coal boy in, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"My Lord hand?" returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

"What's the day, my fine fellow?" said Tywin.

"Midwinters day, Lord Tywin." The boy replied.

"Midwinters day!" said Tywin to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Boy." Tywin called

"My lord." returned the boy.

"Do you know who procures the richest pheasants in King's Landing?" Tywin inquired.

"I should hope I did, my lord!" replied the lad.

"Smart boy." Said tywin. "Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize Turkey: the big one."

"It's hanging there now, lord Tywin" replied the boy.

"Good." said Tywin. "Go and buy it. I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a silver stag. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you a full golden dragon."

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.

"I'll send it to Bob's." whispered Tywin, locking his hands behind his back, and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be."

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street door, ready for the coming of the butcher's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.

"Ah,Here's the Turkey. Good morning, how are you? Blessed Midwinter!"

It was a Turkey. He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped them short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.

"Seven hells, it's impossible to carry that from Flea bottom. Do you have a cart?" cried Tywin.

The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the escort back, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he cried.

He dressed himself all in his best, and at last got out into the halls of the Red Keep. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Tywin regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word that three or four good-humoured fellows said, 'Good morning, sir. A merry Christmas to you.' And Lord Tywin said often afterwards, that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.

He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his chamber yesterday requesting donations. It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.

"My dear sir," said Tywin, quickening his pace, and taking the old gentleman by both his hands. "How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A blessed midwinter, my lords." Tywin smiled.

"Lord Lannister." They bowed.

"Yes," said Lord Tywin. `"That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon." Here Tywin whispered in his ear.

"Smith bless us!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "Lord Tywin, are you serious?"

"If it please," said Tywin. "Not a copper less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that honour?"

"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him. "I don't know what to say to such generosity. Thank you, and thank his grace!"

"Don't say anything please,' retorted Tywin boldly. "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?"

"I will." promised the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.

"I Thank you," said Tywin. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Seven Blessings upon you."

He went to the great sept, a small guard at his side, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk - that anything - could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he returned to his squire's chambers.

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it:

"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Tywin to the girl. She was a pleasant girl, very comely.

"Yes, milord."

"Where is he?" asked Tywin

"He's in the dining-room, Lord Tywin" she said, observing his chain of office. "along with mistress. I'll show you up-stairs."

"That won't be necessary, he knows me," said Tywin, with his hand already on the dining-room lock.

He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the door. They were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

"Fred." Said Tywin.

Dear heart alive, how the Frey girl stared. Tywin had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn't have done it, on any account.

"Who's that?" exclaimed a voice from another room

"Lord Tywin, may I come in Fred?" Let him in. It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His wife looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness.

But he was early back at his chambers. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob coming late. That was the thing he had set his heart upon.

And he did it; yes, he did. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Tywin sat with his door wide open, pretending tp wite a letter for that prwctise usually occupied his time, that he might see him come in.

His helm was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o'clock.

"Guardsman." Deadpanned the fearsome Tywin the Terrible, with that cold hard stare, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"

"My most sincsirest apologies my lord," said Bob, kneeling. "I am behind my time.2

"You are." Repeated Lord Tywin. `"es. I think you are. Step this way, ser."

"It's only once a season, my lord" pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. 2It shall not be repeated. I was making with my family yesterday, Lord Tywin." Tywin knew only too well.

"No, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Tywin, "I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued, casually walking around the tablt to the place where Bob was, arms locked by his side and giving Bob such a dig in the shoulder that he staggered back again; "therefore I am compelled, by the laws of Gods and men, to raise your salary.'

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Tywin down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.

"A blessed midwinter to you and your family, Bob,' said Tywin, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier midwinter, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a winters bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another 'I'."

The Lord of Lannister was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he took him on as a page and later squire. He became as good a friend, as good a lord, and as good a man, as the any in King's landing (or beyind) knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep the winter spirit well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, Gods bless Us, Every One!


End file.
